Organic milk is healthier
Well, milk is the Green topic of the moment, so it’s interesting to see that this British study showing that organic milk is healthier than conventional milk. Apparently:
The study showed organic (summertime) milk had 67 percent higher levels of vitamins and antioxidants, and 60 percent more conjugated linoleic acids than regular milk. It also had higher levels of good Omega-3s and lower levels of Omega-6s than conventional milk.
…whatever all that means. I’m guessing all those things are good and tasty, but I’m not sure I need that level of scientific description for me to be able to work out if something is good for me or not. Personally, my instinct is if you were to take two cows and dip one of them in chemicals and fertilizer and leave the other one alone, I have a fairly good sense as to which one I’d rather be supping from.
Anyway, the key issue about organic milk being better than conventional milk in Britain is that organic milk is more likely to be grass fed – so perhaps the study is not as relevant here where grass forms a much greater part of cows’ diet. It’s another interesting reason though why we should be wary about the impact of increasing intensification of dairying here. If we are going to squeeze more cows on to existing land the result is likely to be greater demand for chemical inputs to the land and for alternative feed sources to supplement the cows’ grass diet. And now it seems that may have health implications.
Photo Credit: dandownunder
June 5th, 2008 at 2:30 am
Why cant we bring back raw milk, it is supposed to be better for you than organic milk.
Anyway with price of milk the way it is i dont think farmers will sell milk off the farm, we will have to wait till the milk price starts to drop.
And that doesn’t seem to be any time soon.
June 5th, 2008 at 5:53 am
and of course..
no milk is healthiest..
phil(whoar.co.nz)
June 5th, 2008 at 5:57 am
and still no mention of russels’ successful ascension of the greasy-pole..?
what gives frog..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
June 5th, 2008 at 6:09 am
what is ‘the vision’..?..maaan..?
or..is the penny finally dropping..?
..how all you green party members who were ’suckered’ by the white-anting campaign against nandor..
..and who voted for norman..?
..have you (finally!) realised how much you really screwed that one up..?
phil(whoar.co.nz)
June 5th, 2008 at 6:59 am
I think that news item about Britain’s ’summertime’ organic milk is rather interesting.
Science, when at school, was never ‘my thing’, but having watched the dairy industry for 60 decades I am interested in the whole subject of milk production in NZ.
I like to think that milk/milk products from organically farmed cows would be superior. I certainly like what I read about organice dairy farming practice. The intensive methods being used, increasingly so, on the mega dairy farms nowadays, has me feeling uneasy.
June 5th, 2008 at 8:42 am
paranoid peter, go to the farmers direct…
June 5th, 2008 at 8:43 am
and can we please see the photos from metirias calendar..?
can we..?..can we..?
i wanna see keith as a local mt rushmore..
..and..and..what is russel..?
(y’know what blows the mind about this sorta stuff..?
i mean..the original idea of the calender is a good one..
but..and it’s a big but..
..the idea of morphing mp’s faces into landscapes/trees/w.h.y.. is a bad bad idea..eh..?
and that this whole ‘extremely tacky’/guaranteed generator of bad publicity concept was workshopped/created/approved..applauded(?)..
(that’s what gives me brain-freeze about the whole thing..)
and please..!..please reassure us that nobody involved with this has anything to do with the upcoming green party election campaign..!
(here’a a thought..!..morph clark..(the dairy pimp)..onto a cow-pat..)
phil(whoar.co.nz)
June 5th, 2008 at 9:02 am
The guy that headed up the study Prof. Carlo Leifert
Res Dev Prof of Ecological Agriculture at NewCastle University is heavily biased towards finding the positive benefits of organic milk. You need someone more objective to head up a study of this caliber.
June 5th, 2008 at 9:48 am
I am under the impression that factory farming lives off cheap oil and with the price of oil these days factory farming must be nearing a break even point. I personally can’t see factory farming being a big part of the future. There must be a point where sustainable farming is more profitable than factory farming.
Thanks StephenR I have a farmer friend I help him out on the farm for milk.
Its against the law to sell raw milk at the moment, i would like to see that changed.
June 5th, 2008 at 10:03 am
Factory farming’s competitiveness will decrease as the price of petroleum goes up, as the fertilisers and pesticides it uses are based on petroleum. Can’t be too far off, but either way we’ll be paying more for our food (until other technological alternatives are found i spose).
At *another* point local food will become more competitive with organics/factory farming due to transport costs - one might only buy organic, but that food can still be “swimming on a sinking sea of petroleum”…
June 5th, 2008 at 10:07 am
paranoid peter,
I am glad you do realise it is against the law to sell raw milk direct from the farm. At the time this law was brought in they had a very good reason for doing so, plus the fact that raw milk does not keep.
Sure, if one lives on a dairy farm or has a cow on the life style block, fresh milk everyday is not a problem, so long as bovine TB is not a problem.
June 5th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I found it interesting that the term used was “organic (summertime) milk”
I’m afraid I took this to mean milk from cows that had sufficient grass growth on their land to not have to add suppliments to their diets to feed them. This does not preclude the addition of nitrogen (the most used fertiliser for grass) to the land to promote that growth. However, I am prepared to accept, that nitrogen, which is most commonly prilled from natural gas in the UK, is a ‘natural substance, and as such does not remove the right of the resulting milk to be deemed ‘organic’.
Is this correct?
June 5th, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Unfortunately the IFOAM and BIOGRO organic standards still allow mutilation of cows, and early separation of cows from their calves, so it is no better in terms of animal welfare than conventional milk.
June 5th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Possibly. It assumes that organic farmers only operate in a calculating, businesslike fashion, with their ethics only extending to the letter of the law - I would venture that some do care about the things you mention.
June 5th, 2008 at 8:12 pm
The fact that the organic milk is higher in omega3 is due to it being grass-fed. Non-organic milk from grass-fed cows is also high in omega3.
June 6th, 2008 at 3:57 am
“…And now it seems that may have health implications.”
Bollocks.
According to the study, organic milk may well be healthier and have higher levels of vitamins and antioxidants but nowhere did it say that non-organic milk was unhealthy or “may have health implications.”
Typical scare mongering by the Greens.
In fact the report went on to say:
“(Organic milk) is more expensive to produce as you get less milk per unit of land and it is more expensive to buy.”
When are you lot going to realise that organic food is only for rich people. Hard to reconcile your social and environmental priorities with that little conundrum eh?
June 6th, 2008 at 8:42 am
The health implications are that we will be missing out on *more* vitamins and antioxidants through not drinking organic milk/grass fed milk. No idea where you got “scare mongering” from, or the thought that people didn’t know that organic milk costs more. Frog just made the point that organic milk is healthier.
Geddit?
June 6th, 2008 at 2:32 pm
I think what Cowpat means in his/her abrasive way is that when frogblog says that not drinking organic milk has health implications it implies that non-organic milk is unhealthy.
Also organic food by being more expensive is unaffordable by vast numbers of people due to it’s cost, hardly equitable. but frog blog chose only to quote selectively from the article and offer some vague platitude about health implications.